CARACAS -- Venezuela's unenviable reputation for violent crime looks easy to prove but difficult to explain, as does the government's apparent inability to do much in terms of reining in murderous thugs with evidently all too easy access to firearms.

In the absence of official statistics, Provea, a civil rights group, says that 10,606 people died by violent means in the 12 months ending in September this year. That marked a 10.86% jump on the already high figure of 9,567 killings in the corresponding period a year before.

Provea is estimating that on current trends the full year will end with more than 13,000 murders. No wonder that crime repeatedly comes top in one opinion poll after another. And yet, people seem curiously inured to the relentless slaughter.